Designing Group-Based Learning Activities

For a while in my online teaching career, I’d been reluctant to use group learning techniques with my students. My students are primarily undergraduate majors who have been out of school for a while and generally need more hand-holding (or so I thought). What I’ve learned after many years online is that even though my students work individually, they also work collectively as a group. In fact, my wonderful students often initiate working in teams when discussing issues in the forums, studying for the midterm, and giving each other advice for tackling the final project. I realized that group learning was already being used in my courses, so I concluded that I could expose my students to group-based learning activities and assignments that would benefit them in the long run.

When designing group-based activities, an instructor should consider these areas:

1) Group formation (how the groups are formed) 2) Group roles (assigning leaders and other roles) 3) Group conflicts (dealing with issues and conflicts)

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